


potential

by Anonymous



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst, Bruce Wayne is Trying, Bruce Wayne is a Bad Parent, Forced Pregnancy, Hurt/Comfort, Omega Dick Grayson, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rape Aftermath, Scenting, omegas have p_ssies in this please be advised
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:21:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25996654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Bruce received the video five months ago. Five months of not sleeping, of watching the video every night searching for another clue about who has Dick and where.They've had Dick for five months.
Relationships: Batfamily Members & Dick Grayson
Comments: 26
Kudos: 194
Collections: Anonymous, DC Kink Meme





	1. Bruce

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted from the [dckinkmeme prompt](https://dckinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/766.html?thread=591358#cmt591358):
> 
> In an ABO universe, Dick is an omega. The world is pretty modern overall, of course there will always be some level of sexism but it's not a large issue. But there's this far-right terroristic-type group that thinks omegas are just good for doing as they're told and being bred and have made it their mission to "fix" omegas who think they deserve equal rights, and they get ahold of Dick, sending a video to Bruce saying they'll return Dick when he's "better". For some reason Bruce and Co can't find Dick for a long time, and by the time they do Dick's severely traumatized and been conditioned into obedience and submission towards alphas.
> 
>   
> **general content warnings** (things that will show up throughout): fantasy misogyny/transphobia (anti-omega sentiment lol), rape/noncon, violence, torture, conditioning, and forced pregnancy. the rape and violence will remain in the past, but is referenced and detailed. 
> 
> check the notes of each chapter for additional content warnings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> additional warnings: mention of noncon sex tapes

Bruce destroyed every copy of the video except for one that he keeps on his person at all times. The contents of the USB stick couldn't get out. Not to the public, not to other heros, not to Tim or Alfred or anyone else who knew how to navigate the bat computer. He couldn't take any chances, not just for their wellbeing but for Dick's.

He can't imagine how Dick would feel if Tim, or Alfred saw that. Bruce seeing it is bad enough. But he had to watch it, and he has to keep a copy, because it's this video that's going to help him bring Dick home. 

In the video, Dick is obviously drugged. He's shackled to a slanted table, almost entirely upright. His wrists are bound by his sides and his ankles are spread and bound to the corners of the table. His head lolls to the side and his eyes are open but hazy, without awareness in them. 

He—Bruce's son, his oldest son—is tied like this, naked, while a shaky handheld camera pans up from his feet to the upper half of his body, lingering for a moment on the apex of his thighs. Then the person holding the camera adjusts the frame so that Dick's nakedness is clearly visible. Then there's a voice that comes from behind the camera.

"Who knew Bruce Wayne's ward was an omega bitch?" it says through a heavy layer of distortion.

Dick twitches and his face turns towards the speaker, towards the camera. A nasty bruise on his temple and the ones on his knuckles and the redness of his wrists under the cuffs—each injury twists the knife further into Bruce's chest. 

"Consider this a courtesy message," says the voice. "We have no demands. No ransom. You'll get him back, we promise. Once we've fixed him."

Bruce doesn't need an explanation. The emphasis on Dick's presentation, the way he's put on display, it's obvious enough what that means and even the vaguest thought of that turns his stomach. 

Even drugged out of his mind, moving like he's fighting through molasses, Dick tries to pull at the restraints. A black-gloved hand reaches out and slaps him. 

The sound of the impact made Bruce flinch the first time he heard it. Now that he's watched the video so many times he can get through the whole thing without blinking. 

Dick's bruised temple bounces off the metal table and he groans. 

"See how disobedient he is? You never taught him a thing, did you, Mr. Wayne?" The gloved fingers drag down Dick's cheek, poking at his lips. "Remember this disobedient bitch. Next time you see him, he'll be perfect."

Dick tries to twist his head away from the fingers in his mouth, and the video clicks off.

Bruce received the video five months ago. Five months of not sleeping, of watching the video every night searching for another clue about who has Dick and where. Five months of Damian retreating into himself and his anger as thoroughly as the first year he was in Gotham, of trying his best to keep Tim in the dark and enduring his anger and distrust, of Jason—his second son, who he couldn't protect, who returned from the dead having presented as an omega—of Jason refusing to move back into the manor where Bruce can protect him.

Five months. They've had Dick for five months. As far as Bruce can tell, Dick hasn't been moved from this compound in all that time. Another slap in the face—it's in Gotham. Right in the middle of the city. 

The USB burns a hole in the pocket of his suit. He has Red Robin and Batgirl near the perimeter, helping to quietly get rid of the majority of the armed guards—all men, all alphas, Batman notices as he incapacitates them. 

Damian is grounded at the manor. It was a fight that they hadn't had time for, but they had it anyway, and with Alfred's help Damian was sent to bed early. By Batman's order, Jason didn't know about the compound: he doesn't want Jason within miles of this place. He wants to burn the building to the ground.

Red Robin and Batgirl alone are enough backup. Batman won't fail to bring Dick home.

"There's no more moving heat signatures," comes Red Robin's voice. "I'm coming in—"

"No," Batman says harshly. "Stay there, look out for backup."

"But—"

"Red." Batgirl, tense and no-nonsense.

Cassandra knows better than anyone except Batman the extent of what's wrong. He did his best to hide it, to turn away from her, to make excuses not to see her. But he knows that she knows.

Tim falls silent. He will do it, Batman's sure. They still don't know who kidnapped Dick. If it was one person at the top or an organization; where they might have headquarters; where the money was coming from. As long as all they have are uncertainties, there's danger. Batman needs his exit covered.

Despite the unprofessionalism of the handheld video, there was a fortune involved in what the kidnappers had done, buying out a building this big and filling it with normal businesses and then at the bottom a room where one heat signature lay prone and hadn't moved since Batman entered the building.

He opens the door and it's Dick. 

His son. His firstborn. 

He's lying on a completely bare cot in what looks like a hastily repurposed office. A desk is pushed up against the adjacent wall. Several sturdy metal rings are drilled into the concrete of the back wall at differing heights. One at waist height has a short length of chain connected to it. The chain ends in a metal cuff attached to Dick's ankle. 

Batman sees white. He rushes into the room without checking it properly, without knowing where the cameras are or if there are traps. He needs to get to his son's side and see, feel, prove to himself that—

He's breathing. Dick is laying on his back (he sleeps propped on his side, with his arms thrown wide around him, that's what Batman knows), eyes moving under his eyelids in his sleep. Batman can feel his breath on his hand as he cups his cheek.

The overwhelming scent of the room assaults him as he stands there. The soft omega scent that he recognizes as his son, part of his pack, his to protect. He knows it from the too-few times he held Dick close after he presented at sixteen, and from the many times Dick would step into his space to argue with him, forgetting or not caring that he was five inches shorter than Batman’s 6’2”. 

And the smell of omega is smothered in layer after layer of strange alpha scent. More than two alphas, more than three. Batman loses the thread that separates one scent from another. More alphas than he can count were here, touching Dick until they marred his scent with their own.

A growl builds up in his chest and he swallows it back with difficulty. 

Dick looks thin and pale. Bruises line his neck and arms and circle his wrists. Unexpectedly, he's wearing a simple white shirt and gray sweatpants. Both are big on him. He looks so small. 

"Status?" Red Robin asks, his voice tense.

"Get the car," he snaps, too gruff. "Batgirl, stay on the perimeter."

The line goes quiet. Dick twitches and curls his arms around himself at Batman's voice, not entirely waking up. He hugs himself around the middle in a self-soothing motion Batman hasn't seen from him in, fuck, ten years—

Where the hem of his massive shirt rides up Dick's stomach, there's a bump that Dick cradles in his hands. What used to be toned acrobat's muscle now swells under splayed fingers.

Five months. He’s been here for five months.

Images flash through Batman’s mind, some of the same that he's seen pasted on the backs of his eyelids for nearly half a year, and some of them entirely new horrors. Dick being taken from his apartment in Bludhaven. Being hit hard enough to leave the bruise he saw in the video. Dick's limbs held down as he was violated over and over. Fighting back and being overwhelmed. Nights spent chained to the wall by this bed, in this windowless room, thinking help wouldn't come. 

Seeing and feeling his stomach swell. Days and weeks of sickness, sweating and vomiting in this room as he rode out what could have been the full first trimester of a pregnancy—

He needs to get Dick out. As soon as Dick opens his eyes, Batman has to be sweeping him into his arms and carrying him out of this prison. He moves down to the shackle, already pulling out lock picks—and finds the line where the metal was welded shut around his ankle. 

His mind blanks out once again in horror at what he's seeing. Nothing he hasn't seen before; no possible human cruelty is outside of his imagination, not anymore. But to see his son tortured in this way hits something deep in him that he doesn't think can be reached any other way. 

At that moment, Dick wakes up. Batman sees his jaw clench and the measured way his chest moves, though he doesn’t yet open his eyes. 

“Dick,” he says helplessly, terrified that Dick is waking up with a strange man at the foot of the bed and not reacting. 

Dick’s eyes snap open, wide with panic and confusion. He scrambles onto his side, curling around his stomach as if to protect it. 

That hard-to-reach place inside Batman is being flayed alive. 

“Dick,” he says again. 

“B…” Dick’s voice seems to fail him. He remains on his side, wide eyes staring up distrustfully, but there's a spark of recognition in them, he knows who is here for him, and Batman needs to get them both out of this horrible room. “You…”

Batman can’t help but put a hand in Dick’s sweaty hair, just for a moment. He expects a flinch that doesn’t come. “I’m taking you home.”

Dick shuts his eyes tightly. Batman has been in close enough to his position—never as bad, never so horrific, but an echo of it—enough times to suspect that he’s halfway to convincing himself that this is a dream or a hallucination. He doesn’t wait. He grabs the chain trapping his son in the room and in three great heaving pulls, he yanks the ring and its anchor from the wall. They clatter onto the floor.

Dick is upright when he looks back over, and the panic has tripped over the line to terror. At the loud noise, the show of strength, or something else. Batman just needs to get him out of here. He wraps the end of the chain around his forearm, securing it, and picks Dick up—as carefully as he's ever held something in his life, except maybe once before.

He expects Dick to stiffen and for his scent to ripen with fear; he doesn't expect Dick to also whine and thrash and try to throw himself from his arms. 

He holds Dick tighter—he weighs so little once he lets himself collapse against Batman’s chest plate and submits to being carried—and shoulders his way out using the path he carved in. He comes across no extra guards or heat signatures. Outside the Batmobile is running, the back door wide open and the front seat empty. 

Red Robin stands next to the car, and Batgirl is nowhere to be seen. 

“I’ll tip off Gordon,” Red Robin says, the phone already in his hands. 

Batman nods. “No patrol,” he says into the comms, too gruffly. “Meet us in the cave.”

“Yes,” Batgirl says. 

There’s a thread of fear pulling his spine taut, and he knows it won’t relax a centimeter until everyone is safe and in the cave. 

Red Robin is looking at the figure in Batman’s arms. Dick has turned his face into his chest and is still pumping out pheromones filled with acrid fear. His arms, hands clutching his elbows, obscure his stomach from view. 

“Now!”

Red Robin startles and takes a few steps towards where he parked his motorcycle a few blocks away. Batgirl slips down from the shadows and puts a hand on his arm. She also looks towards Dick.

“Is he okay?” Red Robin asks. 

Batman’s arms tighten around Dick. He can’t say yes and he can’t say no. He gives a sharp nod, not trusting anything else. 

It looks like they don’t trust him but Batgirl and Red Robin disappear into the street-lit night. Batman cradles Dick close and climbs into the backseat. As soon as the door slams shut the engine roars to life. The car knows its way home. 

Dick takes short, shallow breaths against the chest plate, leaving fog marks on the suit. Batman doesn’t know what he’s thinking or what to say to help him. 

“It’s okay now,” he says and rocks Dick back and forth a little. He speaks through the cowl. He can’t take it off until they’re in the cave, it’s not safe. “It’s gonna be okay, chum.”

-

Bruce stumbles out of the backseat as soon as the batmobile comes to a halt, hefting Dick into his arms once more. Alfred is waiting, his lips a thin line, and with him stands—

“Damian, I told you to be upstairs,” Bruce shouts. 

Dick whimpers and his fingers scrabble at the shoulders of the suit. Bruce has both arms occupied carrying him so he can’t take off his cowl yet. Damian’s face is a little mask of frustration and disobedience. 

“Is that—” Damian uncrosses his arms. “Let me see him.”

“Upstairs, now!” Bruce took a step forward, in the direction of the medical portion of the cave, with a soft bed to lay Dick down on and equipment to show if he is really okay. Bruce’s mind runs a hundred miles an hour: Dick is probably malnourished if not undernourished, possibly dehydrated, and he’s shivering like he’s cold. He’ll prepare an IV while waiting for test results, just in case, and find a knife to get rid of the shackle, and he’ll have to call Leslie to come and check on the pregnancy—

It makes him sick to hope that it’s healthy, and sicker still to think that there might be a complication, even something serious—

It takes Alfred snapping his name for him to realize that Dick is struggling anew in his arms, trying to get down but held fast by Bruce’s iron grip and the chain still wrapped around Bruce’s arms. 

“Please,” Dick is saying. “Please don’t. It’s me, I’ll—”

Bruce’s stomach roils. He hurriedly stoops and sets Dick’s bare feet on the ground. He doesn’t want to let Dick out of his arms but Dick obviously wants to be free of them, so he untangles the chain from his arm and sets the end of it on the ground. 

Dick winces at the sound it makes. 

Bruce reaches up and undoes the clasp on his cowl as Alfred steps forward and reaches a hand towards Dick’s shoulder. 

Dick drops to his knees. He holds himself up with his palms on the ground like he needs the support. “Please don’t take it out on him.” His voice is surprisingly strong compared to before. “Alpha.”

Bruce, Alfred, and Damian with his brows furrowed in confusion, all seem to find their breath frozen in their chests. Bruce realizes all of a sudden the strong angry alpha scent that surrounds him. He pulls his cowl off with numb arms and it only gets stronger. 

“I know I’ve been—” Dick stops, swallows, and keeps going. “I’ll do better, okay? Just please, alpha. I’m the one who fucked up.”

The cowl drops from Bruce’s hands. He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what to—

He takes one heavy step towards his son—towards his sons. Dick heaves himself upright on his knees, lifts his chin while keeping his eyes trained on the ground. Putting himself between Bruce and Damian. 

Putting his swollen belly on full display. 

Alfred is in the position to see it immediately. He puts a hand to his mouth. 

The roar of a motorcycle engine cuts through the air. Tim’s red bike skids to a stop beside the batmobile and he and Cassandra tumble off it and towards the rest of them. Dick’s nostrils flair and he flinches away from them but he stays in front of Damian where he’s planted himself like—like he’s in any condition to protect him, and like there’s something here that Damian needs protecting from.

“Drake.” Damian’s hands ball up into fists as he rounds on Tim and his voice is back to his regular loud monotone. “What happened? Why is Grayson acting like—”

He trails off. It seems he doesn’t want to end the sentence or doesn’t know how. 

"What do you," Tim says. He stops walking. Cassandra is a few steps behind him, frozen in place. And Damian looks, now, at Dick on his knees, bruises on every inch of bared skin, balancing a pregnant belly. 

Bruce couldn’t protect him from this even if he knew how. 

Alfred is the one who recovers first. He takes his hand away from his mouth and puts it on Dick’s shoulder. 

“Master Dick, I assure you, no one here means any harm to anyone. Master Damian is going to go to his bed, where he should be, and you’ll see him in the morning.” He levels a look on Damian that Bruce doesn’t see but, to his shock, Damian crosses his arms, turns around, and stomps up the stairs without a word. 

Alfred catches Dick’s eye. “Now come on, my boy, let’s get you lying down so we can see how to move forward.” He stoops and picks up the end of the chain, then helps Dick to his feet and begins to lead him to the medical bed, steadying him but not commenting on the way he winces with each step. Softly, but still audible, he adds, “I can’t express how good it is to see you, my boy.”

And all the while Bruce stands like a statue, frozen with fear that any move will cause Dick to go to his knees and beg.

Cassandra follows Alfred, pulling out the same equipment Bruce had been listing in his head, as Alfred helps Dick into the bed. Dick goes so easily wherever he’s led. He seems less tense with Alfred next to him. Bruce wonders if that’s simply because Alfred is a beta, or if it’s something else. 

Tim stops next to Bruce. “What happened?” he asks. 

Bruce can’t bear his eyes. He doesn’t meet them. “Look and see.”

Tim takes half a step forward. It reminds Bruce of Dick. Tim couldn’t hope to intimidate Bruce with his height but he takes that step anyway. “What was in there? Where did you find him? What were they doing? Why—”

“Put together your report,” Bruce orders. “I’ll add mine by noon tomorrow.” 

He walks away, maneuvering easily around Tim. He needs something to do with his hands. Dick is lying back with an IV already in his arm. Cassandra has taken a blood sample and she hands it to him when he walks over. She puts her hand over his and Bruce—he makes the mistake of looking her in the eyes. 

He can’t read people even a quarter as well as she can, but still he can see the confusion and pain there. _Is this what you’ve been hiding? Is this where he’s been this whole time?_

Everything Bruce blames himself for is reflected back at him in her eyes. Tim doesn’t know that Bruce knew, but Cassandra does. She knows now the secret Bruce has held for the past five months, that wherever Dick was, he was being violated and raped because he was Bruce Wayne’s son—not even his son, his ward, but that’s enough—and for being an omega.

Bruce turns away from her, and focuses on the readings showing up on the screen. 

“Do you want something to help you sleep?” Alfred asks quietly. 

“N-no,” Dick stumbles out. “I can sleep. I don’t need anything.”

It sounds like the truth. He’s slurring his words like he’s half-asleep from exhaustion. 

“Okay,” Alfred says. “Okay. You should rest your head.”

Bruce feels Alfred walk up to stand behind his shoulder. Neither of them say anything to each other. They watch the results of Dick’s blood test load line-by-line on the screen. 

“Should we call Dr. Thompkins?” 

Tim’s still here. So is Cassandra. They’re both alphas. Until five months ago Bruce had never realized how lucky he was, to not have to worry about them in the same ways he worries about Dick and Jason. They’re alphas so he wants them to stay away from Dick for now, until they know what’s wrong with him and what was done to him. 

Right now he doesn’t feel lucky to be an alpha. 

“I think we had better, yes,” Alfred says. 

“Okay.” Tim, pale and seventeen years old and still in his uniform, starts to pull out his phone. 

“Perhaps tomorrow,” Alfred interrupts him. “So that Master Dick can sleep the rest of the night. I’ll call in the morning.”

The protein levels in Dick’s blood sample are low, so it’s likely that he is malnourished. Bruce will double check with Leslie when she comes in. But he sees the wisdom in waiting until tomorrow. He turns around from the computer, and breathes a sigh of relief when he sees that Dick is asleep already. 

“You should all get some sleep,” Bruce says. 

Heavy silence falls over them. Bruce doesn’t take his eyes off Dick. Asleep with only his arm sticking out of a white blanket, Dick looks even smaller and paler. The bruises on his neck and his wrist stand out like paint. 

“I’ll stay,” Bruce says.

Alfred moves first. He puts a hand on Tim’s shoulder briefly and says, “We all need rest. Come on.”

Tim drags a chair over to the side of Dick’s bed before he follows Alfred and Cassandra up the stairs. 

A wave of exhaustion hits Bruce so suddenly that he collapses into the chair with a thud that he fears might wake Dick. But Dick doesn’t twitch. 

Bruce puts his elbows on his knees and leans forward to rest his forehead on his hands. Not touching Dick, but as close as he can stomach. He can still smell strange alphas in Dick’s scent, and he can also smell a note of something sweeter than he remembers, something ripe, something that would have weaved itself into Dick’s regular scent when he became pregnant. With his rapist’s child. 

Dick sleeps like the dead through the rest of the night and the hours of the early morning. Bruce watches the rise and fall of the blanket above his chest. 

-

Alfred comes down into the cave in the morning and informs Bruce that Damian and Tim are both taking the day off school, but have agreed, with Cassandra, to stay upstairs until Dick is ready for visitors. He’s carrying a tray with tea, orange juice, and some toast. 

He brushes a keyboard out of the way and places the tray down, then says, “Get changed into your civilian clothes, Master Bruce.”

Bruce looks down at his suit. 

“When he wakes up he won’t need Batman, he’ll need—”

“Okay,” Bruce snaps. 

He strips off his suit and pulls on a pair of clothes he has in the cave—old jeans and a white t-shirt. When he returns to Dick’s bedside, Dick is still asleep. 

Alfred stands up from the chair. “Your breakfast is upstairs,” he says.

Bruce clears his throat. “I’m staying.”

Alfred doesn’t seem surprised. “I’ll bring it, then. Something simple for your stomach.” He stops and presses a hand to Bruce’s shoulder as he passes him, startling him into locking eyes with him. “I know you need this time. But remember you have more than one child who needs you.” 

As his footsteps echo away from the top of the cave, Batman’s phone rings. He sees who it is and strides away to answer. 

“Yes?” 

“We swept the building,” Commissioner Gordon says, getting straight to the point. “Among the evidence—” 

“Send copies to me,” Bruce interrupts. “I’ll get back to you when I have—”

“There’s videos,” Gordon says shortly. “On CDs, if you can believe that. A stack of ‘em.” The line crackles as he sighs.

Bruce feels like he’s taken a punch to the temple. A roar fills his ears.

Videos. 

Does that mean—

“Listen, I just— I know that the kid’s—” Gordon’s voice gets muffled like he’s running a hand over his face. “I just thought I’d give you a call before I document them as evidence.”

Gordon’s defeated tone of voice tells Bruce exactly what kind of videos there are. The roar in his ears gets louder.

“Who’s seen them? How many copies?” he spits out as soon as his brain begins to work again. 

“No one’s seen them. Just me, and just enough to know what they are. I don’t know about copies. These are all we found. There might be some on a computer somewhere, but—”

“I’ll come get them.” He can’t let anyone else see. He can’t let them be submitted as evidence, dragged out as evidence in a court case, shown to strangers or even people who might know Dick— No. He’ll take them and destroy them with his own hands, if that’s what it takes. Whatever it takes. “I’m the best bet at finding them and—”

“Yeah, yeah, Batman. I get it,” Gordon sighs. “I’m at the office.”

“Twenty minutes.” Bruce hangs up and goes to change back into his suit.


	2. Dick

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> additional warnings: suicidal ideation. i feel a need to warn that this chapter goes into more detail about the past torture (violence/rape), as it's in dick's point of view

Bruce isn’t there when Dick wakes up. 

Dick doesn’t know why he expected it. He recognizes the cave around him so he knows last night wasn’t a dream. He remembers Bruce touching him like he wasn’t repulsed by the sight of him, and pulling the chain from the wall—the last time Dick tried to tamper with the chain they shackled his wrists to the ceiling in the empty room and beat him and then left him hanging there for hours—and he remembers the scent of Bruce’s anger. 

Damian. He’d been angry at Damian, when he should have been angry at Dick. 

Maybe Bruce had realized that sometime in the night and that’s why he left. 

Alfred says there was an emergency, his jaw tight like he’s angry or lying or both. Dick doesn’t call him on it. He says yes when Alfred asks him if he wants Dr. Thompkins to examine him. Bruce is gone and so even though Alfred is a beta he’s obviously in charge. Dick—shouldn’t say no. He knew that before, but he really knows it now. The rules of society, the instincts that he’d repressed and ignored, are now pressed as deep into his skin as the bruises from the handcuffs. 

_Bitch can’t even take a knot, what kind of useless fucking omega—_

And he knows he needs to see a doctor. Himself, he’d manage. He’s recovered from worse injuries than this before. But he can’t just worry about himself anymore. 

A familiar terror shifts in his chest when he thinks about the life growing inside him. He hasn’t seen a doctor once, they hadn’t allowed it. There had been bandages and pills when he had to be punished, all administered by men with military efficiency. 

No one bothered to check on his swelling belly. Other than Tommy they hadn’t seemed to care, except for the ones who would turn him onto his stomach when he started to show, so they didn’t have to see it when they fucked him. Dick would struggle onto his hands or his elbows, holding himself above the bed or the floor or the desk so the force of the thrusts didn’t land on his belly. Except for when he was too tired or hurt, or when he was tied up, or when they threw him down and told him to stay and he didn’t have a choice—

Dick lets his mind go fuzzy and blanked-out. He doesn’t have to think about that. Maybe he won’t have to— At least no one at the manor ever fucks him. Even though, if they want to now, seeing what’s been done to him and what he is—if they want to, Dick can’t say— He shouldn’t say—

_Make your holes useful, slut, because my patience is running out real quick._

Dr. Thompkins seems to arrive between one blink and the next. She asks Dick to lay on top of the blanket so she can examine him. 

He peels it off of him obediently, and shivers. He hadn’t noticed the extra security that he felt just having a blanket covering him until he didn’t have it anymore.

“It’s always cold in here, isn’t it?” she asks rhetorically. 

Dick finds he doesn’t have anything to say. He looks out through his own eyes like they’re a strangers’. He knows Dr. Thompkins, he’s known her for most of his life. She’s an alpha. He just—wants her to tell him how his baby is doing, and that’s all. 

She starts the exam at his head. Dick follows what she’s doing wearily. She checks for concussion, for breathing irregularities. 

“I’m sure you have something for the bruising,” Dr. Thompkins says to Alfred. 

Alfred, sitting in the chair on the other side of the bed, nods. He tells her that Dick ate breakfast and kept it down well, and that he’s no longer dehydrated. 

She nods, satisfied. 

She asks Dick to take off his shirt and he does. Alfred looks away and he’s glad. Dr. Thompkins can’t do much but document the scars. The only unhealed marks on his body are fingernail scratches and the bite marks on his small tits. They swelled too with the baby, but they’re still barely a handful. 

_Not the prettiest, but you make up for it don’t you?_

Dr. Thompkins finds the place where Dick’s ring and middle fingers were broken and then crudely set. She asks. “Are you numb anywhere?”

“No, alpha.”

Both Alfred and Dr. Thompkins look at him strangely. 

After a moment she says, “No need to call me that. ‘Doctor’ is fine, if you have to, but I’d prefer not even that.” She moves his fingers for him. “Any pain?”

“No,” he says, or, if there is a spike of pain, “Yes.”

Her mouth twists unhappily. “I can prescribe you something topical to help with the pain.”

Dick already knows his right-handed grip will never be the same again. It’s an old wound, an old grief. 

“All right,” Dr. Thompkins says, ever professional, when she gets to his stomach and waist. “We can do the rest in the order that you want. I’ll need to do a natal exam, and examine any other injuries. Which one would you like to do first?”

Other injuries. She means he’ll take off his pants next, and—

Dick’s eyes flick to Alfred. 

“Would you like privacy?” Dr. Thompkins asks. She’s kind. She’s an alpha. Dick is torn between shame and fear. Shame of what Alfred will see on his body, fear of being left alone with an alpha. Neither of those emotions are right. He shouldn’t feel shame at how his body has been used, since his body is meant to be used. He shouldn’t fear an alpha because that would mean that he doesn’t want to be touched, and his body is meant for alphas to do whatever they please. 

“Master Dick?” Alfred’s blue eyes swim into view. “Whatever would make you feel most comfortable.”

Dick wants, suddenly, to laugh. He wants to ask where Bruce is again. 

It doesn’t make sense. He knows he’s scared of Bruce, and he knows he needs him. If Bruce was here he would make the decision for Dick. 

“Master Richard?”

Dick blinks hard. “You can— The injuries first, alpha.” Then he kicks himself for forgetting already that Dr. Thompkins told him not to call her that. “Doctor. Sorry.”

“That’s perfectly fine. You’re okay with Alfred staying?”

Dick just wants to get it over with. The little corner of his mind he’d shut himself up into is now burst wide open and he’s horribly present in his body, in this moment. He wants to lock himself up again but he can’t seem to get there.

Dr. Thompkins tells him he can put his shirt back on, so he does. She asks him to take off his pants, so he does. He’s not wearing any underwear. 

He spreads his legs without being told. Alfred is already looking away, but still sitting by his bedside, his dull beta scent a source of comfort. But the dominant scent in the room is Dr. Thompkins’, and Dick does what he’s been trained to do when he’s spreading his legs for an alpha. He gets wet. 

_Hurts less when you don’t fight it, hole. Don’t you like it? Look at you._

Dick’s face flushes red but he doesn’t move. Dr. Thompkins checks down his legs with the same professional manner and only falters at the brand on his inner thigh. It’s long since scarred over, so there’s nothing she can do except document that too. 

Dick keeps his eyes shut and braces himself for the first touch. He’s torn inside from yesterday but, he reasons with himself, it’ll probably be quick. She wouldn’t fuck him here, in front of Alfred. 

He’s shaking all over, though. It reminds him of the tremor down his left side that he developed a few months ago. The tremor didn’t go away so much as become more rare, so he might think it was just that but he’s shaking equally on both sides of his body. 

All the while his cunt clenches and leaks wetness down onto the bed.

Dr. Thompkins must see how much his body is warring with itself. He’s making her job harder just laying here. 

_No one’s ever trained you before, have they? I’ll fix that, hole. We’ll fix that._

Her hands linger on the bruising and broken skin that runs all the way around his ankle from where the cuff went. “All right, I think I’m done.”

Dick blinks. 

“You can put your pants back on,” Dr. Thompkins says. 

Dick does, his face burning when his thighs rub together and they’re wet. 

She asks him about the pain and discomfort, and says something about an ointment he can apply himself. It’s humiliating that she doesn’t touch him at all, while Dick squirms and drips and craves a touch on his aching, burning cunt even if it hurts. He wants to die. 

No, he doesn’t. He can’t. 

“It’s easy from here on out,” Dr. Thompkins says. “Lay back and lift your shirt up above your stomach, please.”

She touches his stomach firmly, with much more pressure than Dick ever dares. He almost says something, asks her if she’s sure that she isn’t damaging the precious delicate thing inside him, but he bites his tongue in time. 

“Good,” she says finally, almost to herself. Gently she asks him, “Do you know how far along you might be?”

“Three, three and a half months?” 

"I'd say four months," she corrects. 

Dick might have died months ago, if Tommy hadn’t told him that he was pregnant. The punishments he earned were getting worse and worse. Tommy would stroke his hair and tell him it wouldn't hurt so much if he stopped fighting, but Dick didn't listen. Tommy was right that there was no use: they all fucked him regardless and if he so much as snarled back they could beat him and fuck his ass and stretch his cunt around two knots, around a beer bottle, around the handle of a weapon.

Dick had been laying on his stomach on his cot, bleeding from lashes on his back, his broken fingers cradled to him, and Tommy had touched his side and told him. Dick hadn't believed it so Tommy got him a pregnancy test and unlocked Dick's chain from the wall to carry him to a bathroom where he could use it.

So Dick stopped fighting. He was obedient and good, and, like Tommy had promised, he was beaten less often. That was about three months ago.

Dr. Thompkins tugs his shirt back down over his stomach and turns away. “I just need a urine sample, but it doesn't have to be now. I’d feel better if you take another IV." 

Dick obediently stretched out his arm for her to put in the needle. Then she turns away and starts to pack up her things. He stares at the blanket. "I…"

She looks at him expectantly.

"Is the baby okay?"

"It's perfectly healthy as far as I can see, for what you've been through."

Dick's heart clenches in fear. For what he’s been through. Does that mean—?

"As long as you keep eating well and keep up with doctor visits now that you can, I’d recommend at a hospital, Dick, you're fine. The pregnancy is normal."

Keep eating well, schedule regular natal exams. Dick can probably do that. He doesn't think Alfred would allow him to eat poorly. He'll have to ask Bruce about the natal exams. 

He rubs his stomach through the shirt.

"Do you have any other questions for me?" Dr. Thompkins asks. "About the pregnancy or anything else."

Dick thinks about it. "When will I feel it move?"

"Probably within the month," Dr. Thompkins says. "But don't freak out if you don't. Every baby is different."

In a month. He has to live another month and then he'll be able to feel his baby. One more month. 

Dick can do that.

-

Alfred goes out to pick up the prescriptions that Dr. Thompkins writes for him. He reads them out to Dick in a matter-of-fact tone, as if Dick has the final say on any of them. There’s an antibacterial ointment that’s okay for internal use, a dose of oral antibiotics, a topical pain cream for his fingers, and iron supplements. 

Dick nods to all of them, and Alfred puts a hand on his arm and says, “If you need anything while I’m gone. Well, this is your home.”

Dick nods again. 

Almost as soon as Alfred leaves, Damian sneaks down the stairs. 

Dick pretends to be asleep. Until last night he thought he would never see Damian again. Tommy always said that they weren’t planning to keep him forever but even when Dick imagined getting out, or getting rescued, he had no hope that Damian would ever want to see him or be allowed to. Bruce certainly didn’t want him to be around Dick, he made that very clear last night. 

He hears a small body drop into the chair by the bed, and no more movement after that. 

Dick twists his fingers together anxiously, glad that the blanket covers him up to his neck. 

He thinks Damian must know that Dick is only pretending, but he must be determined to wait Dick out because he sits quietly for a long time. 

“It’s me, Grayson,” Damian says eventually. Dick keeps his breath even and doesn’t think about anything. He’s lucky to even be able to hear Damian’s voice again, to smell his faint child’s scent and to know that he’s okay. 

He realizes that he doesn’t know if Damian has bruises or not. He knows that Bruce wouldn’t hit a ten year old. Or, eleven. Damian is eleven now. He knows Bruce wouldn’t, or he thinks he knows, but what if he’s wrong? He’s been wrong before. He thought it was just him but then Jason came back and Dick didn’t know how to ask about the way Jason so easily accepted it when Bruce raised a hand to him, both in and out of uniform.

“You are being a coward,” Damian says. 

Dick opens his eyes. He doesn’t bother pretending to wake up; the farce would just hurt Damian’s pride. 

“Finally.” Damian’s voice cracks. He’s standing by the bed and he looks unharmed. When he crosses his arms he doesn’t move like he’s hurt anywhere under his clothes either. 

“Damian.” Dick can’t say anything else after that. 

Damian stands there and scrunches his face up in the expression that means he’s trying not to cry. Dick looks away and hears him take a few deep breaths. If Bruce hit Damian, Damian would take it. He wouldn’t see anything wrong. 

If he presents as an omega, then—

Dick takes a few deep breaths of his own. Fear sours his scent anyway. 

“What’s wrong?” Damian demands. “Are you okay? Did something happen?”

“No, Damian. Nothing’s wrong, I’m okay. I’m glad to see you.” Dick’s arms itch to hug him, but his stomach curdles at the thought of touching Damian and dirtying him. 

“That is a lie.” Damian crosses his arms tighter. 

Dick’s heart breaks. “It’s not. Damian, I’m happy to see you, really.” 

Damian’s face starts to crumple in on itself again. Dick wants so badly to reach out like he used to, like Damian is used to, but he can’t ignore how used up he is, how the scent of alpha still clings to his skin. Tears prick at his eyes. He clenches his jaw and refuses to blink, keeping them back.

“Damian," comes Bruce's loud voice. "What are you doing here? Why is Dick upset?"

Damian jumps and then straightens in anger, looking defiantly at their father. Bruce is in the suit but not the cowl and he has a bag at his side. 

"What's in there?" Damian demands.

"Nothing that concerns you.” Bruce’s glove clenches on the strap. Dick averts his eyes. It doesn’t concern him.

Damian isn’t deterred. “Is it evidence? Is it about Grayson’s kidnappers?”

Dick flinches. 

“Do you know something? Are you doing anything? We can’t just sit on our hands while—”

“Damian!” Bruce roars. “You’re upsetting him!”

Damian hesitates as though he’s just smelling the overwhelming, nauseating stench of Dick’s fear. He probably is—as an unpresented child, his sense of smell isn’t as attuned as it will become later. 

Bruce takes a harsh breath, almost definitely counting to ten inside his head. When he speaks he sounds calmer but it only makes the words cut worse. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” he tells Damian. 

_You shouldn’t be in the cave right now_ is what he means. Dick knows that isn’t what Damian hears. 

For some reason, Damian looks at Dick. With his little blank face and dark blue eyes. Like he’s looking for something, like Dick has anything to give him that isn’t tainted.

“Damian,” Dick says quietly. “You should listen to—”

“No,” Damian says. “He’s kept you down here long enough! You should not be in the cave like a prisoner. You should be sleeping in your own bed by now. Tell him.” 

Dick’s old bedroom. From five months ago, the bedroom that he only used when he was staying in Gotham for more than a few weeks at a time. It’s not the one he had when he first came to the manor, which was right across the hall from Bruce’s master bedroom. Close enough that when Dick had a nightmare he could sneak out on his toes and peek his head into Bruce’s cracked door to make sure that he was there and that the blankets moved up and down with his breathing. 

When he was eighteen, an adult, on his visits to the manor he carried his things from that room to a bedroom further away, a little bigger, and with the tiniest pretense of independence from Bruce. That’s the bed Damian is talking about. Right across the hall from where Damian sleeps. 

Dick doesn’t know what to say. He says nothing. 

Maybe he is a prisoner, now. Bruce might think he went along with the men of his own volition and—would he be wrong? He has reason to doubt Dick’s loyalty. Or he’s one step up from a prisoner, he’s an omega. 

“Grayson.” Damian’s hands clench in the blankets at the side of the bed. 

Dick closes his eyes. “Just listen, okay? It’s easier if you just listen to him.”

Bruce says, “Go. Upstairs.”

The small weight at the edge of the bed lifts. 

“We’ll talk later,” Bruce adds. 

Damian scoffs. He leaves. 

Then it’s just Bruce and Dick. Bruce sighs heavily and sits in the chair. Dick manages not to flinch. 

“Do you want to move to your room?”

Dick wants to know what’s in the bag. 

No, he doesn’t. It doesn’t concern him. Bruce said so. 

“What am I talking about? Of course you do. Damian’s right. Jesus,” Bruce mutters. He’s rubbing a hand over his temples when Dick looks over. “I’ll get the IV out, and then we can go. You can get some real sleep. Are you hungry? Dick.”

There’s a hand in Dick’s hair suddenly, and he freezes. His bones turn to ice. He can’t move. 

Bruce pushes his bangs off his forehead. 

“You need a haircut,” he says. 

A haircut. Eat well, schedule a natal exam, get a haircut. He goes over the list while Bruce shoves the bag under some computers and unhooks the IV. Simple things, things he can control, mostly The ice that encased him before slowly melts and leaves him exhausted, like it’s all he can do to keep sitting up. Anxiety flutters in his lungs. He has to remember: eat well, natal exam, haircut. He needs to ask—

“Alpha?”

Bruce frowns, then just as quickly attempts to wipe the expression off his face at the scent that comes off Dick when he does. “Dickie.” He sounds so tired. “You don’t have to call me that.”

Dick doesn’t know what to call him, then. He’s always called him Bruce, ever since he was a kid. Sometimes dad, but not often, because it wasn’t true, not legally. Calling him by his first name was disrespectful. He shouldn’t have. 

“Just Bruce is okay,” he says.

“Bruce,” Dick whispers, quickly to get it over with, and he rushes into the question as well. “Can I schedule a natal exam? You can— However you want to do it, that’s fine, I just want to see someone who can tell me if the baby—”

Bruce holds up a hand and cuts him off. “Of course. We can do that. We’ll do that, Dick.” He takes both of Dick’s hands in his own and squeezes tight, until it hurts. “We’ll be fine,” he says. 

-

Dick walks up the stairs of the cave himself. Bruce keeps pace with him, steady where Dick is shaking with the pain in his hips and pelvis and the stinging where there was a chain around his ankle for months. For a second Dick remembers what it felt like to be ten years old and walking in step with Batman. Like no one could hurt him anymore: not the mean older boys or the nasty guards from juvie, not any mobster or villain, not any freak accident. He could wrap himself in Batman’s cape and close his eyes and know he would be safe. 

He makes it to the top of the stairs on his own two feet, and then he realizes that there’s another flight of stairs between him and his bedroom and frustration burns at his eyelids. 

“Are you okay?” Bruce puts a hand on Dick’s elbow. 

Dick freezes. 

_I’m safe_ , he tries thinking. 

He’s in the manor. He’s home. He’s— 

“I can carry you,” Bruce says. “It’s okay.” 

“‘Kay,” Dick says hoarsely. 

It hurts getting jostled into Bruce’s arms again, but not as much as it hurt to walk up the stairs by himself. He keeps his eyes open and gets his first look at the manor in months. 

_I’m home_ , he tries again. _I’m safe. No one’s going to hurt my baby._

No one’s going to have sex with him. 

Bruce walks him to the threshold of his room and sets him down to open the door, and that’s when the exhaustion from the stairs hits Dick for real. He practically swoons against the wall, earning himself what’s sure to be another bruise on his shoulder. Bruce wordlessly helps him into the room. 

It looks like Dick remembers. Really, it hasn’t been that long. A few months. The sheets on his bed are the same blue he remembers from the last time he slept here. His laptop is on the desk. His books, his posters. The Flying Graysons on the wall. 

There’s no dust or grime. It reminds him of what Jason’s room looked like before they knew he was back. 

He’s too dirty to be here. Whoever Alfred was keeping this room clean for, it’s not him anymore. It’s obvious, too. Even once all the bruises fade, and even if the alpha scents of those men fade from his own, he still—he’s different. 

Dick realizes he’s leaning into the arm Bruce has around his waist, trying to find a way to stand that doesn’t aggravate the ache and burn between his legs.

“Tired, chum?” Bruce asks in a monotone voice. Bruce has two ways of speaking kindly: one is the soft voice he takes with children he meets as Batman; this is the second way, the one he uses when he’s trying to be gentle with people he knows. 

Dick is tired, and he’s in pain, and if he lays down in this room he’s going to rub the scent of alpha all over the bed, and he’ll wake up smelling Tommy and the alphas he doesn’t know the names of, and as he considers that possibility a wave of panic rises in his chest so quickly it feels like fear toxin. 

“Can you scent me?” Dick asks. His tongue is numb and unwieldy in his mouth, but he gets the words out.

“Okay,” Bruce says slowly. “Are you sure?”

He isn’t, but he’s panicking now and he needs something right now to get those scents off him. “Bruce, please.”

“Okay, okay.” His hands are huge on Dick’s shoulder and elbow. “Let’s sit down.” 

He angles them towards the bed and Dick leans away, digs his heels in, shaking his head wildly. “No, here. Please, just do it, okay?”

“Dick.” Bruce searches his face for something and doesn’t seem to find it. Dick sucks in air through a tight throat, close to hyperventilating. He doesn’t want to smell his own scent. He wants it off. 

Bruce has scented Dick only three times before. That’s mostly because of Dick. When he was a kid he didn’t want anyone to put their scent on him where his parents’ scents used to go. He’d meant it when he said he didn’t want Bruce to replace his dad. (He vaguely remembers the first week at juvie he refused to shower until the guard who supervised him called their supervisor to come down and force him to. He hadn’t smelled much like his mom or dad by then anyway.) 

The first time was when Dick was ten or eleven, probably. He’d been Robin, so he was at least nine. It was one of the rare afternoons when Bruce didn’t have any work, and he and Dick sat on the couch in the lounge and watched TV. Dick was basically laying in Bruce’s lap, which wasn’t strange for them. Dick was a tactile kid. 

That day he’d fallen into old, old habits, pushing the top of his head into the base of Bruce’s neck and pressing closer and closer, like he’d do with his dad. He went halfway to making Bruce scent him without even noticing. Then Bruce bent down stiffly and rested his chin on Dick’s fluffy hair, tucking Dick’s head into the crook of his neck. Then he noticed. 

He was a kid then and though it made him sick with guilt a few days later, he barely thought about his parents. Mostly he noticed that Bruce didn’t seem to know how to scent someone, so he tried to help him. He showed him the circular movement of the inside of his wrist on Dick’s shoulders. Kids can’t smell scents the way they’ll be able to once they present, but Dick could tell that whatever scent Bruce was surrounding him in, it was warm. 

The second time was when Dick was twelve. Wetting the bed was a problem that lasted for about a year before it stopped as suddenly as it started. It was horrible. One night it happened twice in a row and the second time Dick woke up in wet sheets he sat there for thirty minutes, knowing he couldn’t wake Bruce, not again. 

Bruce checked in on him before long and found him there. Dick cried so much that night, like he was a baby instead of the almost-teenager he was supposed to be. Bruce helped him clean up and let him sleep in his bed for the rest of the night, and scented him there. 

The third time was to calm Robin down after a dose of fear toxin. 

And now Dick is asking. Whatever Bruce sees in his face must convince him that Dick really needs it, because he steps forward. His scent hits Dick in the face, and then Bruce brings his hand to the back of Dick’s neck and pulls him forward into the crook of his neck. 

Dick breathes in carefully and reminds himself that it’s Bruce. The alpha is Bruce. Bruce holds him carefully like he’s breakable. With one hand he rubs Dick’s shoulders and the back of his neck where his most sensitive scent gland is. The other hand finds Dick’s and he presses his thumb hard into the gland at Dick’s wrist. 

Slowly, his warm alpha smell fills the room, overtaking any others. It washes over Dick’s body, making him shake. The scent of those alphas might cling to him in places, but his smell, the chemicals his body makes, are his again. 

Dick whines horribly and collapses into Bruce’s chest like his strings were cut. 

That’s when Alfred clears his throat. 

Dick’s head snaps around. He’s standing in the open doorway, obviously been there for a while. He’s holding several small plastic bags from the pharmacy. Bruce takes his hands off Dick immediately and clears his throat. 

“Sorry to interrupt,” Alfred says. “I thought it would be best to start with these now, in case Master Dick would like to nap.”

“Of course,” Bruce says. “I have work to—” He clears his throat again. 

“I didn’t mean to imply you had to leave,” Alfred says pointedly. 

“Will you be okay, Dick? Here, wait.” Bruce pulls him gently towards the bed and this time Dick lets himself be led. When Bruce lets go of him, Dick sinks down onto the mattress. “Will you be alright?”

“Yeah,” Dick says. Bruce has to work. That makes sense. “Of course. I’ll probably sleep, like Alfred said.” 

Bruce clears his throat again and leaves. Alfred sighs.

“He’s trying,” he says to the walls.

Dick knows. 

Alfred walks Dick through the routine of antibiotics and nutrients, and offers pain medication that he refuses. 

“Acetaminophen at a proper dose has no adverse effect on a pregnancy,” Alfred says softly. 

Dick refuses again. It doesn’t hurt that bad. Alfred shakes his head but doesn’t push it. The last thing he brings out is the antibacterial ointment; just puts it on the nightstand and doesn’t say anything about it. Dick goes red and is grateful that he dragged himself under the blankets. Maybe if he can hide his body forever, and keep anyone from looking at or touching it ever again, it’ll be better.

Maybe not. He takes the ointment. He has to heal, for the baby, so after Alfred puts his hand on Dick’s head and then leaves the room, Dick rubs the ointment inside himself. It burns worse at first, and he starts to get wet like he’s been trained to. He doesn’t come, though it’s a close thing, and he doesn’t cry at all.


	3. Jason

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> additional warnings: panic attack, self harm (scratching), mentions of canon-typical violence
> 
> in terms of timeline, jason has "returned" within the past year or two. other than that........... shrug

Jason doesn’t mean to run into Batman. He’s just in his civvies walking down the street to the corner store that sells the one dollar donuts he likes. And there’s Batman, emerging from the police department like a shadow and taking off across the rooftops. In broad daylight. 

Well, Jason reasons, if it’s something important, he’ll hear about it sooner or later. If not from his own contacts, then from one of the bats themselves. 

For a second his mind goes to Dick. Some part of Jason quietly hopes that when Dick pops back up from wherever he was holed away, or escapes from where he was being held—Batman, and subsequently his whole clan, wholeheartedly believe he had been kidnapped, though Jason isn’t privy to the evidence that convinced them of that— First off, he hopes Dick has just left for some peace and quiet, and second he hopes that once he returns, Jason is on the list of people he texts. Just something small, to let him know that he’s okay. 

Whatever. He’s not Bruce’s keeper, not his little minion anymore. If Batman wants to get photographed jumping around rooftops in the middle of the day, that’s not Jason’s problem. 

It is weird, though. Weird enough that the same night, he finds himself breaking into the police station. 

He’s got a spare Gotham PD uniform lying around and he walks in at 2 AM without being stopped. In a back corner he finds an unused terminal and lets himself into the database. He’s not as good at it as, say, Dick or Tim would be; he doesn’t bother to try covering his tracks. When the more robust morning shift comes in, they’ll know that someone was messing around in confidential files, and probably up their security. 

Really, Jason’s doing the station a favor, keeping them on their toes. He shouldn’t have been able to waltz in with only an ill-fitting uniform as a disguise. 

He searches through cases opened in the last few days, and then the last few weeks, and finds nothing promising. More of the usual: theft, assault, a murder with a clear suspect, no high-profile citizens or villains involved. Nothing that would cause Batman to come out in the day. 

Maybe there’s a higher level of security that he has to find and hack into. Jesus, that’s a lot of effort. 

Jason searches for hits on the name “Wayne.”

As expected, no open cases come up. But there is one that was closed yesterday—a missing person’s case for Dick Grayson. 

Jason’s stomach twists. He skims the relatively short file, eyes catching important details. It was opened back in December, five months ago, originally filed by Tim Drake. Near the bottom of the page, someone has noted that this is in fact Tim Drake-Wayne. The entire file is marked confidential, citing the sensitive nature of the citizens involved. The public cover story, Jason had heard from Twitter, is that Dick is visiting family in Europe.

The case was closed because Dick was found—Jason takes a breath reading that—and he was returned to his adoptive father (not mentioned by name), but where there’s space for a medical report, there’s only an asterisk. No possible suspects are named. It doesn’t even say if he was kidnapped or what.

It links to a connected open investigation, but when Jason searches the case number, his terminal doesn’t have the security clearance to view it. 

He throws himself back in his chair, making the wheels squeak on the tile. He only has more questions. The best place to get them answered would be Batman, probably, but—as if. If he crosses Batman in uniform he gives it about a 60 percent chance it’d be bam, lights out, Arkham. The other 40 percent are his chances of running away and getting to a safehouse in time. And he doesn’t have Bruce’s number. He doesn’t have any of the bats’ numbers except for Dick’s, before it was disconnected a few months ago. 

He sighs and rummages in the desk drawers for a pen and paper. He jots down the evidence file numbers from the missing persons case, and both case numbers, and finds the evidence room. 

It’s dark, as expected. He’s about to curse under his breath at his lack of foresight to bring a flashlight, just as he catches a glimpse of a pinprick of light somewhere through the maze of file cabinets and shelves of boxes. 

He sneaks forward and around the shelves as quietly as he can in shitty police regulation boots to the source of the light. He peers around the corner straight at the back of Red Robin’s uniform as he crouches among the contents of an evidence file.

Almost as soon as Jason steps close enough to see him, the penlight goes out. Tim takes a harsh breath in the sudden darkness. Jason puts his hand on his gun but doesn’t make a move to pull it out, not yet. 

He blinks hard, straining to see anything other than shadow against shadow. “Mind turning the lights back on, buddy?” 

“What do you want?” 

Yeah, the kid’s scared. Jason wants to believe that he didn’t get a good enough look to recognize the police uniform as Jason, but—yeah, no, Tim’s scared shitless of Jason. That’s fair. He wishes it felt like more of a victory, but faced with a skinny alpha drenching the room in fear-scent—there’s not much to be proud of about that.

Jason clears his throat. “Let me guess.” He gestures in the vague direction of the evidence Tim was looking through. “J-812 A?” 

Tim pauses a long time before he says, “B doesn’t want you involved in this.” 

Jason grunts. “Good thing I don’t give a shit.”

The penlight clicks back on. It’s fixed to Red Robin’s shoulder, so he can hold his staff with both hands. A box is open on the ground between them, empty, a few papers scattered on the ground. 

“Involved in what?” Jason asks. “He doesn’t want me knowing that—knowing what the fuck’s going on?” _Knowing that Dick’s back. Nightwing. Robin number one. The original._ Jason doesn’t know a way to refer to him that doesn’t blow their covers wide open six different ways. 

Tim flinches. “There’s not much here. It’s basically nothing.”

Jason slowly takes his hand off his gun and raises both hands in front of him. Tim tightens his grip on his staff but doesn’t make a move. Jason steps forward, enough to be able to read what the papers are. Details about different places Dick lived: his apartment, the penthouse, the address of the manor. Information about his car (missing, possibly spotted across state lines), his credit cards (unused since December, wallet not found), statements from Bruce, Tim, Alfred, Cass, Babs, even Damian (all are a few sentences, and all together only take up a page and a half). 

“Huh.” Jason slowly lowers his hands to his waist. It’s about what he’d expect from a missing persons file about a billionaire’s son, with no sign of a struggle, no ransom demand, and a missing car and wallet. Everyone and their mother probably suspected Dick had skipped town. “So, he’s not in France with auntie and uncle after all.”

Tim’s expression shutters, and then, surprisingly, breaks wide open again. His face is underlit by the penlight and for a second it looks like he’s going to cry. “No,” he whispers.

Jason clears his throat again and decides to ignore the impending tears and hope they go away. “You gonna tell me what happened, or do I have to do the digging myself?”

Tim shifts his grip on the staff and doesn’t say anything. 

Jason sighs. “You can put that down, you know. It’s gotta be heavy by now.”

Tim doesn’t move. 

“You know Batman was here today?” Jason tries. 

Tim frowns. Jason can see the question flashing behind his eyes. 

“The pictures are all over the internet, baby bat,” he says. “You think he took something?”

Tim shakes his head. “Nothing’s missing.”

“What about the other investigation? You checked those files too?” Tim could hack into a high enough security clearance to view any file in the GCPD. He’s got to know everything that Jason knows, and more than that.

“Nothing’s missing.”

“He could have taken it before it was filed.” Jason isn’t sure if he believes Batman would do that, he just says it because Tim’s pissing him off. 

Though, thinking about it, he’s certain Batman would do that. It certainly explains the bag he had with him. But Jason would expect him to do it at night, not in the middle of the day.

“Why do you care?” Tim says. 

“What?”

Tim glares at him. 

“Because I fucking care about—” _Robin number one. Nightwing. Dick._ “About where my fucking brother is, okay?”

Tim’s face breaks again and he looks down and away as he puts it back together. Jason looks away to let him. Jesus, is the kid okay? 

“Come see him,” is what Tim says. “I think— You should. I’ll text you and you can avoid anyone else, but you should talk to him.” He starts uncertainly, but by the time he’s finished talking he’s obviously thoroughly convinced himself that he’s got the right idea. 

Jason shakes his head. Tim ignores him, instead putting away his staff and lunging forward to reassemble the evidence and shove the box back on the shelf. Jason watches him warily. 

“I’m not letting Batman shove me back in Arkham, not for anybody,” Jason says. 

Tim crosses his arms. “I thought you said you cared.”

Jason misses ten minutes ago when Tim’s baby alpha scent was washed away in fear. “Not enough for that,” he says through gritted teeth. “Not ever again.”

Tim wavers. “You won’t see B. And he wouldn’t—”

“Okay, sure, minion number fucking one.” 

“He’s my brother too, you know. I’m here for him, not for B. I want to help— Fuck.” He rubs a hand through his hair and half-turns—not exposing his back to Jason, but telegraphing that he’s about to leave. “Trust me or don’t. You decide.” 

And he runs away. 

Jason doesn’t know how Tim got his phone number, but he’s not surprised when the next day he gets a text from an unknown number. It doesn’t gain Tim any points in the “trust” column, that’s for sure. 

“B’s out. Front door preferred. I’ll meet you.”

Here’s what Jason knows:

Dick Grayson was missing for five months. 

Yesterday he was found, leading to a highly classified police investigation. 

His phone is disconnected, so Jason can’t contact him specifically. 

Tim said he wouldn't trick Jason into walking into Batman's lair to get arrested and carted off to Arkham. 

He wants to see Dick and with his own two eyes make sure he’s okay. That asterisk where the medical report should have been—it could be innocuous (as innocuous as Bruce forcing all his minions to rely on private, off-the-record medical care could be), but on the other hand Jason keeps seeing images of Dick lying broken and bleeding and near-death in a cot in the cave. 

What could possibly keep Dick away from everyone he loves for five months? 

Jason needs to see Dick. But he doesn’t trust Tim. So he does the only thing he can think to do: he calls Alfred. 

“Hello, Master Jason.”

Jason has to take a second when he hears Alfred’s voice. Even filtered through the phone, when he’s sitting in a shitty safehouse worlds away from Wayne Manor, that warm, tired voice takes him back. 

“Hey,” he says. 

A silence stretches out. 

“Not to imply that I’m not delighted you called,” Alfred says. “But can I ask what your purpose is?”

That hurts a little bit. “What, I can’t just call to find out how you’re doing?” 

“I’m doing all right, Master Jason. How are you?”

“I’m good.” 

“I’m glad to hear it.” Alfred sounds as sincere as always, but there’s a strain to his voice, like he has a pot on the stove in the other room that’s about to boil over and half his brain is preoccupied with that.

A stupid metaphor. Alfred has a smartphone, not a landline with a wire. He could just carry the phone with him to the stove and multitask. 

Jason clears his throat. “So, uh, Alfred. I heard Dick’s back in town?”

“Ah.” A sigh whooshes down the line, and when Alfred speaks again there might be a little less strain in his voice. “Yes. He’s down the hall now, resting.”

Resting could mean a lot of things. Was Dick sleeping off jet lag, or in a medically induced coma? 

“May I ask where you heard this news?” Alfred asks.

“Tim,” Jason says. 

This time the silence is decidedly shocked, at least on Alfred’s end. Instinctively Jason wants to take advantage of his upper hand, but then he realizes they are having a conversation, not an argument. 

“So,” he says. “Is he up for visitors?” 

Alfred takes a second to answer. “He’s not able to leave the manor currently. You would be willing to visit where he is?”

“Yeah,” Jason says brusquely. “Alfred, is he okay?”

“I assume you’d prefer it if Master Bruce was away.” Alfred talks over anything Jason might have said. “Perhaps Master Timothy has already let you know that he is not in the manor at the moment.” 

Jason coughs. “You’d be right.” He doesn’t ask again if Dick is okay. 

Alfred does say, “I’ll let Master Dick know you’re coming. You might as well leave now. I doubt he’ll say no.” So Dick, at the very least, isn’t in a coma. 

Jason straps on his helmet and heads for Wayne Manor. 

He lets Alfred open the front door for him, but only because Alfred asked him not to break in. 

It’s awkward to see him after so long. He doesn’t think Alfred has seen him out of uniform in—a very long time. That shows on his tired face, and in the slight shake of his hand when he reaches out to touch Jason’s shoulder. Then he takes Jason’s other shoulder, too. 

“Master Jason.” His beta scent washes over Jason and that hurts more than anything else because he remembers it so clearly.

“Yeah.” Jason shifts from leg to leg, standing in the foyer with Alfred holding him by the shoulders and looking at him as if it’s been years. Has it been years? There’s a lot that Jason doesn’t remember. He’s seen the others out in Gotham in their uniforms, but—maybe not Alfred. 

Oops. 

Alfred takes a breath and moves his hands to his sides. “It’s good to see you,” he says. Then, before Jason combusts from self-consciousness, he gets down to business. “How much has Master Tim let you know about the situation?” 

“Nothing,” Jason says. “Literally I don’t know shit. Dick’s here, somewhere, maybe?”

Alfred nods once. “You’re aware Master Dick was missing. He was found the night before last, and returned here to recover. He is—hurt.” 

The pause in the last sentence does not reassure Jason in the slightest. “How bad?” 

“He is conscious and able to explain to you himself,” Alfred says. “I’m not saying this because I feel I need to, but please don’t push for information he doesn’t want to share. I believe he’s simply excited to see his brother.”

Alfred leads him up to Dick’s bedroom. Halfway through the maze of staircases and hallways, Jason realizes he could have found the way by himself—some kind of fucked up sense memory, maybe. He shoves his hands deep into his pockets.

“Where’s Tim?” he asks. 

“I’m not aware,” Alfred says. “Master Damian is at school, however.”

Jason’s a bit relieved he won’t run into that particular problem. He runs through a list of bats currently living in Gotham. “Cassandra here?”

“She is very unlikely to interfere.”

Jason shrugs to himself. Alfred brings them to a stop in front of a door that Jason remembers belongs to Dick. 

“I’ll remain just outside in case either of you should call,” Alfred says. 

Jason shrugs again. He takes one hand out of his pocket and knocks on the door. 

“Yeah,” calls Dick’s voice. 

Jason figures that’s an invitation to come in, or all the invitation he’s liable to get, anyway. He walks in. 

Dick looks—fine. He’s sitting up against a pile of pillows, even, with a thick blanket pulled up underneath his armpits. He’s bruised up and a little thin in the face, yeah. But it’s nothing out of the ordinary for after a mission, and nothing like the horrors Jason was expecting. 

“Wow.” The breath whooshes out of Jason’s chest. “Everybody’s acting so crazy I thought you were dying. Wait. You’re not dying, right?” 

“No,” says Dick. 

“Seriously, man. Batman’s out in the daytime, Tim and Alfred are going behind Bruce’s back, Damian’s at school. It’s like the twilight zone.”

“I thought that when I heard you were here,” Dick says.

Jason does a double take. Oh shit. He did come to Wayne Manor, didn’t he. “Everyone’s crazy for you, Dick. How does it feel?”

Dick looks at him with his sick-looking sunken eyes and rolls them. “Like fucking shit,” he says.

Jason laughs, more out of nerves than anything. “Sounds just about right.” 

The silence that settles over the room is the most awkward that Jason has endured in a long, long time. Usually when he deals with people other than cashiers he’s behind his mask, and silence doesn’t mean much to Red Hood. 

Jason Todd wants to crawl out of his skin. Why did he come here again? Oh, yeah, Dick disappeared for months. 

“So,” he says. “No one’s told me if you got kidnapped or what.” 

“I’m not kidnapped,” Dick says. 

“I can see that, I meant—”

“Yeah, I was.”

Jason’s stomach sinks. He didn’t realize until this moment that he hadn’t believed it yet. 

“As Richard Grayson,” Dick says. “Kind of a new one.” 

“Shit.” Jason fidgets with his hands in front of him, still standing awkwardly on the other side of the room. “Where were you?”

“Kidnapped.”

“Man, and I thought I was the one of us with the most brain injury.” 

Dick says, “They didn’t take me out of Gotham.”

“ _Shit._ ” They had to have been some pretty organized motherfuckers, being able to hide Dick right underneath Batman’s nose. Red Hood hadn’t heard a peep about a kidnapped billionaire’s son either, which was the kind of thing a certain type of person would love to brag about. That Red Hood didn’t hear about it meant that word wasn’t on the street; that word wasn’t on the street meant that whoever had Dick had a chokehold-tight control over every man in their ranks. 

Dick picks at the blanket. 

_So, how was your kidnapping?_

Jason has no idea what to say. He never talks to people outside of business anymore. He’s got to start making small talk in checkout lines or something. He crosses the room to get closer to Dick’s bed and be able to look out the window. That’s always a good bet when he doesn’t know what to say. Gaze out the nearest window. 

At the foot of Dick’s bed, Dick’s scent hits Jason for the first time. The top layer is Bruce’s scent, but gone stale; a scenting a day or two old. Underneath it’s muddled, like Dick’s been drugged, or scented over and over by different alphas. 

Neither option does anything to help the pit in Jason’s stomach. 

Dick notices him staring. “What?” he asks warily. 

“You smell like shit,” Jason says because he’s literally unable to stop putting his foot in his mouth. 

Dick grimaces and rubs his neck. The amount of bruising that he rubs over makes Jason flinch. Dick just mashes his wrist into his main scent glands harder, even though it must hurt. 

“Hey,” Jason says. “You okay?”

Dick twitches out a shrug and with considerable effort brings his hand back to his lap. 

“You know, if you want…” Jason scrubs the back of his neck. “Would it help if I scented you?” 

Dick’s face twists with some pained emotion. 

“Or not. Shit, sorry.” 

Dick shakes his head, then keeps shaking it. “Not your fault. Sorry. Fuck. Sorry. No. I want you to but, no.” 

“That’s fine, man. It’s okay.” Jason steps closer to him, a hand reaching out in an instinct to comfort him. He doesn’t know how to do touch but that’s what Dick knows, it’s how he communicates. 

Jason’s still a step away when he gets a breath of Dick’s true scent. Under Bruce’s stale alpha scent and then the confusing muddle, there’s something unique and Dick’s in there, sweet and omega. But it smells different. 

A familiar kind of different. 

Jason freezes with his arm outstretched. The words fall out of his mouth before he can think. “You’re pregnant?” 

Dick’s expression shatters into pieces. Before he covers his face with his hand and the blanket, Jason can see him start to cry. 

_Great fucking going, Jason fucking Todd._

Dick cries for a long time. Jason doesn’t know what to do except to sit gingerly at the edge of the bed and push as much of his jasmine-flower scent into the air as possible. He tries to make himself smell comforting, instead of panicked. It kind of works. At least, Alfred doesn’t barrel into the room to chase him out with a shotgun for making a torture and rape victim sob. So there’s that. 

Eventually the blanket falls away from Dick and Jason sees what it was hiding. Dick’s pretty far along. Too far for there to be an option that doesn’t involve delivering the child. Far along enough that Dick has already gone through all the options and probably decided something, all before Jason even knew—before he even knew Dick was being tortured like that. 

When Dick stops crying Jason is relieved, but after a moment or two of stillness Dick raises both hands to the scent glands at his neck and starts clawing at them. He uses his nails, gauging his skin like he wants to rip the glands out. 

Jason almost runs to get Alfred. But Dick’s fingernails are long and there’s already blood underneath them, and Jason catches his hands and holds them still. Dick tries to jerk out of his grip but then takes a deep breath and stops. He presses his nose to Jason’s wrist with his eyes scrunched tight, looking like he’s trying very hard to ground himself from a flashback or panic attack.

“Hey,” Jason tries, very softly. “Dickie. I can still scent you. Can I scent you?”

“Please,” Dick manages.

The next problem is a logistical one. Dick’s nails are digging into the backs of Jason’s hands, and he doesn’t want to let go of them in case the clawing starts again. So he can really only use the scent glands on his neck, and the latent scent clinging to his clothes. And he has to do it without triggering Dick again. 

He’ll go slow.

“I’m gonna start on your neck,” Jason says. He leans forward slowly and hooks his chin over Dick’s shoulder. 

This close, Dick’s scent tells an ugly story. Jason tries not to pay attention to it. Instead he focuses on keeping his scent clear and strong, and rubbing it into Dick’s skin as he slowly shakes his head back and forth. 

Dick whines so loudly that Jason jumps. “You okay?” he whispers. 

“M-m hm.” Dick’s voice shakes. 

Jason nods. He rubs his cheek over Dick’s shirt and tries to breathe directly on it. It’s important to scent clothing too, or the old scent will just creep back in. 

Omega scenting is different from alpha scenting. Alphas layer their scent on top, drowning out everything else for a time. With an omega it’s subtler but goes deeper, down to the roots. 

He has to twist his torso in a weird direction, but he moves on to Dick’s other shoulder and does the same. Dick’s death grip on his hands relaxes until it doesn’t hurt so much anymore. Jason chances working one of his hands free, and Dick lets him. He rubs his own scent over his palm and runs his hand and wrist down Dick’s arm. 

He remembers, suddenly, a time that he scented his mom like this. She was a lot bigger compared to him, whereas Dick fits neatly into the crook of Jason’s neck. He’s pretty sure that most of what he’s doing right now is muscle memory he learned then. 

At some point he started to pur. He keeps his chin tucked over Dick’s shoulder and rubs his scent on his hands and transfers it onto Dick’s skin and clothing and bedsheets. He has to avoid Dick’s actual scent glands, because of the old bruises against the skin there and the new scratch marks, so it takes a long time. Dick’s mottled scent crumbles away slowly and Jason’s fills in the spaces it leaves behind. 

He can still smell Bruce. There’s really nothing for that. This is his house. 

“Sorry,” Dick says. “Sorry, Jay. I think I’m gonna f’cking fall asleep again.” 

“Go ahead,” Jason says. “You seem really tired. No offense.” 

Dick doesn’t answer, because he’s fallen asleep on Jason’s shoulder. Jason lays him back against the pillow—a much easier feat now than it was when he was putting his mother to bed when he was—was he eight? Eleven? 

Jason rubs some more of his scent on the edges of the blanket and covers Dick with it. A corner kind of flops over Dick’s face. Dick sighs and snuggles deeper into the pillows and then doesn’t move, so Jason leaves it there. 

He sticks his head out of the door. Alfred is standing there like a guard. 

“Is something the matter?” he asks. He likely can smell that there isn’t a problem, from all the omega bonding pheromones Jason’s emitting like a cloud. 

“Dick’s asleep. Does he have a new phone?”

“I believe one is set to be delivered this afternoon.” 

“‘Kay. I’m gonna, um, leave him my number.”

“Are you leaving so soon?” 

Jason’s leaving now, before Bruce comes back and he has to jump out of a window. He shrugs. “I hope he’s gonna sleep for a while. Looks like he needs it.” 

He scrawls his name and number on a spare piece of paper and puts it next to Dick’s bed. He stops by Alfred, though, and says, “Can you let me know his new number? So I can text him, you know. In case.”

Alfred says he will, and he walks Jason out without hugging him, which Jason appreciates. That was a lot of hugging and a lot of remembering just now. He might have to cry in the shower later like a real adult. 

Tim is loitering just around the bend where Jason parked his motorcycle. At first he looks surprised to see Jason, but drops the charade in about two seconds flat. 

“What do you want,” Jason says. 

“B’s hiding something from us.” The toe of Tim’s shoe scuffs the dirt. “Cass thinks so too, so.” 

“From us?” Jason asks. “Us?” 

Tim lifts his chin. “Yes. About Dick, and the investigation.”

“What the fuck do you want me to do about it?” If Jason breaks down here instead of at a safehouse, there are going to be a lot less tears and a lot more blood. He takes a breath and beats down the murderous rage. “Here, let me go ask Bruce for some info about Dick. ‘Sure, Jason, of course! You deserve to know! Let me loop you in!’” 

Tim falters a second but stands his ground and says, “You care about Dick. I’m asking for you to help me to help him.”

Truthfully, Jason had intended to start chasing leads about whoever the fuck had kidnapped Dick as soon as possible, and he had planned for the first step to be shaking Tim down for information. But seeing him stand there with his full access to Bruce’s trust and Bruce’s shitty family and the fucking Batcave and lecture Jason about how much he _cares_ —

It’s not his proudest moment, though it’s not even close to his worst moment, either. Jason takes two steps, gets close enough to shove Tim or hit him and Tim scrambles back before Jason can make up his mind about which one he wants to do. 

Tim puts space between them with his arms up defensively, covering his head. Jason gets on his motorcycle and kicks up dust on his way out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i rewrote the ending here about 7 times, and it turns out this chapter resolves a lot less than i expected for it to. SO. i really can't commit to an update schedule, but i'm not abandoning this. i'm working on it at, a pace. next chapter we return to dick's POV!
> 
> thank you guys all so so much for your comments. i really appreciate every single one and some of them helped me to rewrite the ending of this chapter into something that i like. <3


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